Together, the 20 most productive authors account for 39 % of the articles written by British LIS faculty. This suggests that the relative influence of the top authors is even greater in the UK than in the US.

Trondheim

David Nicholas is an invited speaker at emtacl15, Trondheim 20–22 April 2015. His presentaion on 20 April, 14:15–15:00 “Emerging reputational mechanisms and platforms for scholars” provides the results of a recent investigation of scholarly reputation and focuses on the role being played by emerging reputational mechanisms and platforms, such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu and Kudos.

Learned Publishing

2015-02-21 19:28

Dave Nicholas has been invited to join the editorial board of Learned Publishing, the journal of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers published in collaboration with the Society for Scholarly Publishing.

The current (January 2015) issue looks at predatory publishers, the cost of journals, library-supported publishing, and why abstracting and indexing services continue to exist. Discussions backed up with research and evidence about challenges and opportunities facing scholarly communication,
including an article derived from CIBER's work on the Trust Project: Nicholas D, Watkinson A, Jamali HR et al. Peer review: still king in the digital age. Learned Publishing 2015; 28(1): 15-21.

Alive and well

There was an interesting and surprisingly common misperception that open access journals do not have proper peer review systems. While this may be true for the so-called ‘predatory’ open access journals which have sprung up in recent years, it is generally untrue, and emphatically not the case for the BJGP, which applies the same peer review methodology to all research papers considered for publication.

ISSN

2015-02-09 12:00

CIBER have been awarded a consultancy contact by the ISSN International Centre to develop a business stragegy for the future of the ISSN, test by market research and prepare a business plan.

Typically associated with scholarly communication through journals, reputation building has become fixated on metrics such as citations and laterly, with social media, altmetrics. But how do we reconcile a reputation mechanism driven by algorithms with the building of trust and authority, surely the bedrock of science and scholarship?

GHIG in the sun

2014-12-27 00:16

In addition to proficiency in research and teaching, academic success may increasingly depend on accomplishments in domains such as self-marketing, research administration and management, and acquiring research funding. The Graduate School of Human Interaction and Growth (GHIG), University of Bergen will be in Gran Canaria 24–31 January 2015 for a training program: “The many faces of academia – changing expectations for researchers”. Dave Nicholas will lead a session on Self-marketing and research communication.

Peer review

2014-12-20 13:43

Researchers have made the trasition to digital media, but it has made little difference to their criteria for trust: peer review is still the most trustworthy characteristic of all. There is a common perception that open access means not a true peer reviewed journal, that social media is for personal interaction and peripheral to professional life.